Spring Adventures #1 : Damsels in DC...

Part of the reason I didn't fill the first few weeks of my holiday with manic procrastinatory blogging and flickr-ing is because I was swiflty jetted off to spend 10 amazing days in Washington DC to stay with my lovely friend Rachel and a few of her relatives. I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to go, the weather was beautiful and it's an incredible city full of art and books and cakeshops and history and everything that I enjoy. We spent the first few days just wandering the city to get to know it a bit rather than heading straight for the sights. And so glad I did as it is such a gorgeous place! We both fell in love I think. Doing homage to the holiday requires a fair few posts, so I apologise in advance, but here is Blackberry Horse's 'Best of DC'

 

Although this took place on the 6th day of our trip, I feel like I have to start with our tour of the Cherry Blossom round the Tidal Basin, as this is apparently a big deal. Due to the unseasonably good weather (hurrah!) it was all out early on Sunday. It was packed by late afternoon, but it was lovely to see families (and the odd politician) enjoying the sunshine and the trees. 
 

A rose on any other day....

So my university is having our Valentine's party tonight (cue lots of silver facepaint for our little gang's Wizard of Oz costumes) and I was still in a work haze on tuesday....so today is the new Valentines, enjoy! The rose was a lovely little gift from a good friend, and has been cheering me through the week. Hope everyone's feeling simply marvellous, keep an eye out for more snow photos (and recipes!) soon. Love to you all! <3

No business like Snow business...

That title took me a while, so hope you appreciate it. 

It has been a fair week or two since my last post, so I do apologise. Also this isn't the recipe post I'd promised myself either; so apologies for that too! Somehow, the weather has taken a decidedly wintery turn this week. Not so good for getting anywhere (read: out of bed) but lovely if you want to take some time out your weekend and go on a morning photo walk, as I did last sunday, or an afternoon photo walk, as I did yesterday. No wonder I'm getting no work done...the snow cleared up a bit in between and is mostly gone now, but I have some lovely snow picture to share. Far too many in fact. Here's a few, and some more instants, but no doubt there'll be another post or two. In the meantime, there's more on Flickr for you to peruse at your leisure. Have a wonderful, hopefully warmer, week!

Christchurch Meadows

Wintery walk, Christchurch Meadows

Port Meadow, Oxford

Wait a minute Mr Postman...

Just a very short one tonight, because I can't resist showing you some of the lovely things that have arrived in the post or by courier (aka my lovely parents) this week. There'll be a nice long post on the IMPRINT exhibition from Friday coming up, so watch out for that. Such a brilliant day, full of inspirational art and lovely people, so a huge thank you to everyone. 

 

Until then; the Topshop Dalmation Coat arrived from my parents on tuesday, a complete and fantastic suprise! The film is for more instant snapping with my Polaroid 300, so I now have 50 more potential shots, thank you ebay. And that floral saddle bag was from the gorgeous Tieka at Selective Potential from a Christmas giveaway, perfect for little jaunts when I don't need to take the world and all its books with me. Just waiting for the rain to let up a bit for all of these beauties to be put into action...Hope you all have a lovely week, mine's shaping up to be quite exciting. Also I promise there WILL be more baking related posts soon, Don't know about you but I've missed them!

Mmmmmmm nice warm faux-dalmatian

 

The work of an instant...

Goodness it's been a while. But I've decided to make myself have a breather and accept that Paradise Lost is not going to get read in the next hour or so. So important to take time over these things is it not? I actually had some other present posts lined up, but to stop this blog being too 'Look at my new things!' I'll intersperse them with these pics. I've been meaning to scan these in for a while, they're from a Polaroid 300 (Basically a Fujifilm Instax mini) which my mother won and I promptly adopted. I'm still working out how to guess the light properly, but I still love these shots. And they make rather nice tags for personalised presents, if I do say so myself, which is why I only ended up with four to scan in here...

Christchurch Meadows Oxford on the left, though it was not that dark! And blackberrying on the right in Cheltenham

Also, again if anyone is in the London area THIS FRIDAY then do please come along to the Centre of Possible Studies for the Fabelist IMPRINT festival, it's going to be an incredible day, and hopefully my beautiful camera will be there too, as I've just had 50 more instant film sheets delivered. Waiting is overrated.Have a lovely week everyone..hopefully there'll be a new post soon, I have some very exciting things to share!

Rococo Gardens, from my post here

Scanner cut off the border....also turns out close up doesn't work so well.  A lense is on my wishlist!

Farewell to festivity, byebye to baubles, toodlepip to tinsel...

You'll have to wait for the explanation, I'm afraid I couldn't to share the photo

So, today (or yesterday, depending on where you start counting from) is Twelfth Night, the traditional day on which decorations must come down, and so the official end of Christmas. Sigh. Drawing close to the end of my holidays as well, which means last minute work rush, packing, baking and fare-the-well-ing. But to cling onto the festive period as long as possible, I thought I'd share some of the lovely lovely things I was given (Birthday posts to follow) an idea shamelessly copied from the equally lovely Anna (apologies.) It was such a good holiday, and I'm so grateful, that hopefully you'll allow some self-indulgent sharing of the gorgeousness. Note the several themes that seem to be appearing here, highlighting some of my favourite things; Austen, GBBO, collars, red. And my hunt for the perfect satchel is at last over! Merriment all round! 

Also the new Fabelist Journal 'Imprint' has been released, please do take a look at it, once again some very talented people have produced wonderful things! And if you're in London (or fancy a trip) there's the Imprint Festival on 27th January, come and see what this art community is all about. 

Just in case you can't quite see; The Great British Bake Off book, The Boy who Bakes (year before last's winner Ed's book) a Jane Austen biography and her Juvenalia, bow bag, mittens, collared blouses, SATCHEL, and Topshop pearl collar.Perfection.

There may have been a few tears shed at the beauty of this bag...

Nice little collection of collars i think

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ..

 by Edith Lovejoy Pierce (I'm going to confess I do not know much about this lady, apart from that lovely quote and that she was born in Oxford 1904, what a happy coincidence!) 

 Just a short post to say a big HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope 2012 brings much love, friendship, happiness and success to you all...and if that sounds cheesy, then who cares. It's the New Year. I have been a very poor poster recently, and have a lot of lovely things to share (mostly cake and birthday related, and some gifts I simply have to show you as i'm so pleased with them!) But for now here are some mini firework shots from a friend's gathering last night. It was a quiet event, but ever so much fun. A cup o'kindness to you all...

(plus if anyone can help me with the ever so slight skewing of the pictures I'd be forever grateful!)

Yule Trees, Lights, and Treats

More often than not I seem to accidentally pick this bench. And it always brings a smile to my face, for an obvious reason; someone in the long distant past (No-one I know i'd like to add) has carved my name on the arm. And so many a memory of shopping days, dates, people-watching sessions, waiting for rendevouz etc have been peppered with some comment about my supposed vandalism. All very amusing of course, but it fixes this place and all the varying experiences I've had around it together in my mind. Me and a group of friends were even interviewed on it once. I think we talked about vampires...And  every time this little thing, six scratches on a bench, has been noticed and noted, filed away in the brain. So what if the shopping trip was a failure. I had 'my' bench, my Christmas coffee (my first of the holidays, a Toffee Nut latte, and very good it was too) stollen from Huffkins in my bag, my cape and a lovely walk through the crisp wintery sun home ahead of me, to be greeted with some excellent news from my genius little brother. I won't go into it, but so very proud of him, even more so than usual...

I thought I'd accompany this with some more suprisingly sunny winter days, these from Oxford 

Trees on Brasenose Lane, and into Radcliffe Square

 

And some light of a different kind, a few blurry shots from the Christmas Lights switch on a fair few weeks ago, again in Oxford.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower...

 Albert Camus

I don't really have much time to write an in-depth poetic post about the lovely afternoon from whence these photos came, so I'll let them speak for themselves. Partially because I have not yet quite finished the essay i WAS going to do on sunday, partially because I am too damn excited about going to see Laura Marling at Gloucestershire Cathedral this evening! Literally so psyched I am barely able to type coherently...calm self. And speaking of calm, last friday afternoon I did a walk that I've never done before, on one of the most gorgeous Autumny sunny afternoons ever; all crisp air and golden colours. We seem blessed with them at the moment! Lovely friends, good weather, and a wide expanse of work-free-wonder to wander in. Who could ask for a better escape?

Canal walk on the way to the meadow

Summer Adventure #4 and a bit more...Art at Rococo

So it isn't really summer anymore, but I'm still on vacation till october so the 'Summer Adventures' series will continue. But the increasingly autumnal feel in the air does justify me posting these two pieces from the woods of Rococo Gardens. Firstly an adorably rustic set of chairs, bench and Noughts and Crosses set that we happened upon completely without ceremony in the middle of their Bluebell Woodland Walk

 And a bit further on was my favourite sculpture in the whole Gardens, 'Conkers' by Pete Higgs. It doesn't really need much explaining and brought a huge smile to everyone who passed it. Definitely an ambassador for a great autumn tradition and a fantastic piece of art to boot. 

Best. Conker.Match. Ever.

This week seems to have flown away with me, and I can't think of what I've been doing!Last saturday was a fantastic day out at the Organic Food Fair in Bristol (although sadly I didn't take any pictures as I was too busy eating the samples) topped off with lunch at the Pieminster Cafe and a possible sighting of Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall. Me and Sarah maintain it was definitely his curly back of the head and as no one else we know was there to disprove it, it was him. With that, working a few days a week ,seeing my brother's play again and stewing piles and piles of apples (you know it's autumn when...) I think that's my week done!

Summer Adventure # 4 ; Rococo Gardens

Note mother and father sneaking into the scene...

 

For our Bank Holiday outing, mum, dad and I visited the beautiful Rococo Gardens in Painswick. I remembered bits of this garden so vividly from various trips throughout childhood, so I knew that I just had to go back sometime soon. Obviously being a bank holiday during the summer it was fairly busy with families, but still seemed tranquil (and I did manage a few sneaky no-person shots) and it was actually lovely to see young children enjoying the garden and it's fantastic follies as I had. Plus there were some excellent views of the surrounding countryside and local Manor House, a woodland walk, a little cafe with delicious homemade cakes (me and mother shared a toffee tiffin and one of the best brownies I have had in a while; and that's saying something) fruit and veg patches, a lake....it's quite amazing what is crammed into this little jewel of a place! Plus there were a load of sculptures exhibited around the garden, some of which were pure genius so may have to post a few of my favourites from those!

Looking forward to the weekend, hopefully the weather's going to stay nice so I can keep the summer wardrobe going for as long as possible, and I'm going to a food festival with my lovely sister (and fellow blogger at Zenzeroni) in Bristol. Can't wait! I predict eating my weight in tasters and revelling in the gastro-nerdiness...

Wouldn't be a proper day out without a literary reference...

Painswick House